lady of the house
by elincia
Summary: AU; You can't just jump in like that, baby. PeonyNatalia


_notes_: Written for the Tales of Kink Meme on Livejournal, for the prompt "married life". This is seriously ridiculous, I'm not kidding.

* * *

Natalia absentmindedly trailed silk-gloved fingers over the pearls clasped at her throat, her other hand fingering the stem of her wine glass with a detached sort of fascination. Peony's voice trailed from the end of the table, mellow and deep, talking about his cars or his pigs or poker or some other topic that the dinner guests seemed to be a great deal more fascinated by than she was. Jade, somehow having being relegated into a seat right next to him, had taken to arguing with everything her husband was saying, and Natalia, resigned to the idea that it was inescapable, had attempted to drown out all the bickering in the figurative white noise that was red wine.

Anyone could have told her it was a bad idea.

"So Natalia, tell me," Nephry said from the other end of the expansive, white-clothed table. She had been delicately picking at whatever the chef had cooked up (asparagus in butter, filet mignon, crepes with strawberries) all evening, listening in to Jade and Peony's conversation with growing wistfulness. "How are the children doing in school these days?"

Natalia straightened herself, realizing then how dazed she must have seemed. How embarrassing.

"Oh, fine," she said, smiling. Her little boy and girl had been put to bed an hour before, with the promise that they'd get the leftovers of the cook's desserts if they were well-behaved and silent. It was quite a feat, but with a little persuasion and a little Peony-letting-them-eat-chocolate-in-bed, it seemed to have worked. "I'm surprised at how well the both of them behave at school, as a matter of fact--I suppose they're all screamed-out by the time they get there."

She sighed good-naturedly, and took another sip; Nephry laughed a little, and nodded knowingly.

On the other end of the table, Peony was waving his hands about dramatically, nearly knocking over Natalia's lovingly-placed candles in their crystal holders. Luke (sitting opposite to Jade, drinking brandy and being entirely too uncivilized for someone of his social standing--although this really wasn't much of a surprise) had almost been swatted in the face by the man several times, and had taken to complaining about it to anyone who would listen (which was essentially no one).

Natalia drained what was left in her glass with a certain quiet sense of relish.

----

When everyone had first arrived, Natalia was delighted to greet each of them with a hug, or a kiss on the cheek, or even a firm handshake; show them around her house; exclaim over their hair and clothes and photos of their children; pretend to be humble when they oohed and ahhed over the size of her wedding ring--now, with a growing sense of ire, she wished she had agreed to let Anise (and her rich husband, naturally) host the party, so that she could pretend to... feel faint, have the vapours, anything, just so long as she could crawl into bed with an entire bottle of quinto do noval.

There was a certain sense of satisfaction to be had after a tiring day of playing horsey with her children, or practicing her aim at her own private shooting range with her specially-made acajou bow, but... somehow a tiring day of listening to Luke waffle on about this and that with Peony talking over him and Dist screeching about this or that was... well, just that.

_Tiring_.

She had long ago peeled off her pretty white gloves, and massaged her temples with the tips of her fingers when she hoped no one was looking. They had retired to the parlour (as their butler and Peony's old friend so often liked to say), and an increasingly rowdy game of billiards was going on just across the room where Natalia was perched on her chaise longue, wine glass (full of chardonnay, this time, just for variety) in sparkling, diamond-encrusted hand. She had the vaguest idea that one of the help had put on some Mozart--Chopin, possibly--and it very nearly lulled her into a nice, pleasant, dream-like state, the kind usually only accomplished when helping the poor or pulling back the taut string of her bow.

The operative word, of course, being "nearly".

In another few minutes, when her second glass of chardonnay was empty (her third being taken along to the table with her), she finally decided that it was _entirely_ unfair that everyone was leaving her out of their lovely little game of billiards, and was a grave mistake that needed to be rectified.

She swayed over to the overlarge table (expensive imported wood and marble--one of Peony's many babies), and grabbed Guy's pool cue straight out of his (admittedly deft) mechanic's hand. He quickly flinched away from the brush of her well-manicured fingertips, and she took the opportunity to squirm her way in between the others, poising the cue above the cue ball and giving it an appraising look.

Peony began laughing, one hand on his hip. "Natalia, honey, what're you doing?"

"I want to play, what does it look like I'm doing?" She made an attempt to use petulance to her advantage.

"We're in the middle of a game, you can't just jump in like that, baby." He grinned at her, leaning on his cue.

"I think you'll find that I can. I'm the lady of the house!" Before anyone could make a good-humoured attempt at talking her out of it, she stood up on tip-toe, aimed with an increasingly wavering arm, and--as it looked to everyone else, at least--took a blind stab in the dark, as it were, and sent the cue ball flying straight off the table and into a punch bowl.

A punch bowl that Dist had happened to be exulting near; his howls made nearly everyone in the room wince, shooting Natalia reproachful looks.

"Whoopsies!" she said, and hiked up her dress.

"Natalia, Natalia--" Peony rushed over to her side, and stayed her hand, giving her a look that was now a mix of amusement and wonder. "What are you _doing_?"

She glared at him, wagging her cue (or rather, Guy's cue) in reprimand. "I'm going to get the ball!"

"...Honey, what're you talking about?"

"I need to get over the table!" she all but shouted, speaking as if she were explaining it to a particularly stupid and hard-of-hearing child.

"Natalia, you're yelling," Tear said, mouth almost quirking up at the sides.

"There's no need to shout, Natalia, dear," Peony said, putting a hand on his wife's shoulder. "I think you're drunk."

She scowled at his poorly-suppressed laughter. "I am not drunk, Mr. Peony Malkuth! I will have you know that I do not _get_ drunk!"

"I wonder what you'd call this state, then?" Jade said from across the table--not playing pool, of course, but observing on a nearby wing-backed chair with a glass of gin and a subtle, canary-eating smile. "A new scientific phenomenon worth investigating?"

"I would _hardly_ consider this drunk!"

With that, Natalia flung her arm out in a dazzling display of dramatics--and proceeded to shower herself _and_ her husband with cold, sweet liquor.

There was a silence in the guests, during which only the dulcet strains of violins and flutes from the speakers could be heard.

"Now that was just a waste," Peony said, ever-smiling. "Let's get us cleaned up, huh, babe?"

He wrapped an arm around his bewildered wife's shoulders, sharing private smiles with the guests, and attempts to steer her toward the nearest bathroom.

"But--"

"You wouldn't want to stain that nice party dress, now would you?"

"Oh dear."

----

Natalia's bathroom was another source of personal pride; the gleaming marble surfaces of the counters, the high-polished faucets, the gleaming gold-limned mirrors, the expensive little trinkets on each and every shelf filled with glass and pot pourri.

At the current time, however, she was having a difficult time focusing on her husband's face, and thus had no time to be proud of her own brilliant sense for interior decorating.

"Come on, let's get that wet dress off of you."

"You," she said lowly, pointing a finger somewhere in Peony's general direction, "are _not_ a gentleman! Taking advantage of my vulnerable state like this. Why--why--the insolence!"

Peony sighed and began unzipping the back of her gown--some designer brand, blue silk and tulle, hopefully not yet ruined. Not that Natalia couldn't just get another one, but it was the principle of the matter.

"I can't believe this! You taking off my dress, and me not even in a state to say no! Not even able to get away! It's--it's dastardly!"

She begins fumbling at the strap of her satin high-heels, peering intently at the real-diamond clasp about her ankle.

"What're you doing now, Natalia?"

"I'm helping you."

"Huh?"

"I don't like wearing shoes during sex, it makes me feel like a prostitute."

Peony was genuinely confused. "What? No, Natalia, not right now--"

"You can't just start and not finish! You're an awful person, teasing me like this."

Peony began snickering then, hands hovering over the straps of Natalia's bra, unsure as to what the "gentlemanly" thing was to do; he had never been good with that whole chivalry business. "Listen to you! I can hardly believe this kind of talk is coming out of your mouth, little lady."

"Well," she said, flinging a glittering heel aside, where it landed in the bathtub with a horrifying thud, "well, the lady of the house gets to say whatever she wants, am I correct?"

She pressed her lips into the warm flesh of Peony's neck, where she could feel the beating of his heart, fluttering in the web of veins just below his coffee-dark skin. "And the lady of the house always gets what she wants, isn't that always what you're saying?"

"Natalia," he laughed, hands kneading her shoulders, "wait just a minute, everyone else is still here--"

"That makes it more fun," she drawled, and peeled off her hose, tossing them aside like a polyester snail's shell.

"...Fair point."

She began undoing his pants, fingers slow and heavy-feeling, not even bothering with any trifling foreplay.

"Natalia," he said, more firmly, "you're drunk."

"And I don't think you mind one bit, Mr. Peony Malkuth," she countered, and hiked up her skirt.

He found it very difficult to complain.

----

The next morning, Natalia awoke beneath her feather duvet in a pair of modest silk pajamas, head throbbing a little and a bottle of tylenol lovingly placed on her bedside table. She sat up in bed, wincing as the sunlight filtering through their lead-paned windows beneath her eyes.

As if by clockwork, Peony shuffled into the room in a pair of carpet slippers, newspaper and coffee in one hand, pair of pink silk panties in the other.

"...Wh... what... happened last night?"

"You were a very bad girl, that's what."

"Did everyone...?"

"Everyone left after I put you to bed, sweetheart. They couldn't resist my charm. ...Nor could you, by the look of it."

Natalia had enough good grace to look affronted. "That was... I..."

"Don't worry about it, everybody understood. ...And I do mean that literally--those bathroom walls are paper-thin, lemme tell ya."

"Oh dear." She unscrewed the lid of the bottle with resignation.

"Oh, by the way," he lifted up the panties to give her a better view, "you left these in the bathroom--they were hanging over one of the lights."

Natalia remembered, and smiled, just a little.

Anyone could have told her it was a bad idea, but she was beginning to think that assumption was wrong.


End file.
